Investigation remains closed in the suicide of the lover of Cleveland Museum of Art director David Franklin, but questions linger

View full sizeDavid Franklin inspecting a Caravaggio in the Cleveland Museum of Art's conservation lab with conservator Dean Yoder on Thursday, May 23. Thomas Ondrey, The Plain Dealer

Updated Saturday afternoon with new comments from R. Steven Kestner, chairman of the Cleveland Museum of Art board of trustees:

The Cleveland Heights Police and the Cuyahoga County Medical Examiner said Friday that their investigation into the suicide in April of the lover of David Franklin, who resigned as director of the Cleveland Museum of Art in October, remains closed.

Yet documents in the police file on the case raise new questions about when trustees at the museum knew about the suicide and Franklin’s relationship with an employee.

The records indicate that a lawyer for the museum contacted a lawyer for the family of the victim, Christina Gaston, in September, possibly as much as two weeks earlier than the museum said it had learned of the police report about the suicide.

In response to questions about the documents, R. Steven Kestner, chairman of the museum’s board, said on Saturday afternoon for the first time that the museum had learned of Gaston's suicide in September, or about two weeks earlier than the museum had previously acknowledged.

He declined to comment on whether a lawyer from the museum had contacted her family, but he said that the museum is represented in the Franklin matter by the Cleveland law firm of Hahn Loeser. He declined to name the attorneys involved.

"We got the police report in September," Kestner said, "which is how we learned David was present at the scene of the suicide."

He added that "it was in early October when we were able to confirm that David had an affair with Christina while she was an employee."

Kestner declined further comment on Saturday.

Franklin did not respond to a message left at his house Saturday.

Virginia Davidson, Franklin's lawyer, said, “this is a personal tragedy. It has nothing to do with Dr. Franklin’s outstanding performance as director of the Cleveland Museum of Art and the family should be given an opportunity to heal.”

Prompted by requests from Gaston’s anguished mother and stepfather, the police and the medical examiner took a second look in recent weeks at the suicide of Gaston, 34, whose body was discovered in her Cleveland Heights Apartment on the night of April 28-29 by Franklin.

Gaston’s parents sought answers to explain the death of their daughter, a gifted musician and budding arts administrator.

Gaston was a violinist, pianist and conductor with several music degrees who volunteered at Cleveland Cinematheque and worked in development at the Cleveland Museum of Art, where her employment overlapped with Franklin’s tenure.

“We have a strong need to bring closure to this painful time in our lives so that we will have the freedom to grieve,” Ronald Flower, Gaston's stepfather, wrote in an email to police in September.

The follow-up, which the police took pains to avoid calling an investigation, concluded that inconsistencies in Franklin’s account of his discovery of Gaston raise no further questions about how she died.

“The city of Cleveland Heights has no reason to believe this was anything other than a suicide,” the city’s law director, John Gibbon, said Friday.

Gibbon also said that once the Medical Examiner rules a death a suicide, the police have no jurisdiction.

View full sizeAn aerial view of the Cleveland Museum of Art in 2011.Thomas Ondrey, The Plain Dealer

Hugh Shannon, administrator of the Medical Examiner’s office said Friday that the Gaston case is considered closed.

But he said Medical Examiner Dr. Thomas Gilson is reviewing the case and will discuss it with members of Gaston’s family.

“When families are upset they have no other place to go and they come to our office,” Shannon said.

The police records, obtained late Thursday afternoon by The Plain Dealer, sketch a more complete picture of Franklin’s relationship with Gaston, a former museum employee, and of her suicide, than the initial police report on April 29.

The records describe in greater detail the police examination of Gaston’s apartment the night she died, and the possibility that Franklin had or still has a cell phone reported missing from the apartment.

Cleveland Heights Police Chief Jeffrey Robertson said Friday he is not pursuing the absence of the cell phone because it has no bearing on the question of whether Gaston committed suicide.

The records also shed fresh light on the sequence of events that preceded Franklin’s resignation on Oct. 21. The resignation hit the museum near the conclusion of an eight-year, $350 million expansion and renovation and the run-up to its centennial in 2016.

A search for a successor could take up to a year and is underway; trustee, donor and art collector Fred Bidwell has been appointed interim director.

The family released to police text messages exchanged by Cassandra Gaston and Franklin plus a recording and a 20-page transcript prepared by the family of a conversation she had with Franklin after Christina Gaston’s death.

The Cleveland Heights case report that summarizes the police findings as of Thursday stated that Flower (repeatedly spelled Flowers in the document) has “some valid concerns” about the initial investigation of Gaston’s apartment on the night of her death.

But it also states that none of the evidence contradicts the Medical Examiner’s conclusion that Gaston committed suicide.

“Nothing was noted by the officer or the coroners investigator that the scene was ‘staged’ or ‘altered in any way,” Corrigan wrote in the report.

Decaro noted that the medical examiner found that Gaston did not exhibit defensive wounds.

Decaro cited the medical examiner’s report that scars on Gaston’s wrists could be viewed as proof of a previous suicide attempt, which further supported the ruling that Gaston’s death was a suicide.

Corrigan, meanwhile, stated that the two cat bowls found full in the apartment were intended to feed Gaston’s two cats.

Her unlocked back door, which Franklin said he used to enter the apartment on the night of April 28-29, also suggests suicide, Corrigan wrote, because it indicated that Gaston wanted to be discovered.

“The preparation of Gaston providing for her pets, and leaving the backdoor open, is consistent with her wishing to be found and her pets unharmed from her suicide,” Corrigan wrote.

Yet Gaston’s family hasn’t been satisfied.

In emails to police in September, Flower questioned the timing of Franklin’s arrival at the apartment on the night of April 28-29, and pressed police to dig deeper into whether the museum director was truthful in his statements after he reported finding Gaston’s body.

Franklin told police he received a text message from Gaston’s phone at 8 p.m. on Saturday the 27th in which she said she was “depressed from work.”

Concerned, Franklin went to check on Gaston the following evening at her apartment at 2651 Euclid Heights Blvd., he told police. He said he rang the front door and knocked on the back door, and then entered when he tried the back door and found it open. He said he then called 9-1-1.

Police were dispatched at 12:13 a.m. on the 29th, and a Cleveland Heights Fire Dept. Rescue Squad arrived at 12:20 a.m.

AT&T records subpoenaed by police show that the last text from Gaston’s cell phone was sent 6:06 p.m. Saturday the 27th to a colleague at ChamberFest Cleveland, where Gaston was managing director.

Records show no incoming or outgoing text on Gaston’s cell phone at 8 p.m. on the 27th.

In a letter sent to police in September, Flower wrote to police asking them to reopen the case, and said that “the reported description of the crime scene and Mr. Franklin’s statements appear to be inconsistent with witnessed statements he has made to us and with phone records we received from AT&T.”

Flower pointed out that the AT&T records show that the phone had a large data transfer at 12:22 a.m. on the 29th, after Gaston had died and after the police and rescue squad had arrived at her apartment.

Flower also wrote to police that an AT&T technician told him the phone recorded an additional non-billable data transfer at 2:34 a.m. on April 29, a minute before police reported that they had left Gaston’s apartment.

Flower said the transfer could have indicated that the phone was “establishing contact with a [cell phone]’ tower.”

After that, the phone went silent.

In the report filed by police that night, the phone is reported missing.

Also in the initial police report, Franklin described himself as a friend of Gaston’s.

In his letter raising questions about the investigation, Flower said that Franklin and Gaston had been “intimately involved since, at least, March of 2012” and that Franklin was her employer at the time the affair started.

Corrigan wrote in the case report that he does not consider Franklin’s statements on April 29 to be misleading because they could be interpreted as those of a person in a “crisis situation.”

“In my experience, a person in a crisis situation can rarely produce a detailed well thought out written statement,” Corrigan wrote.

His report states that he received a phone call on Oct. 23 from Davidson, Franklin’s lawyer.

He said he told her that Gaston’s family had questions about the missing cell phone and other issues, and he said Davidson “did not have a problem asking her client [Franklin] to provide her with answers and that she would call me back with any answers she got in the afternoon.”

He said Davidson withdrew the offer later that day after Scene magazine posted a story about the police report.

Corrigan said Davidson was upset about the article and quoted her as saying that due to “ ‘people writing articles about my client’ it would be to her client’s best interest not to answer any of our [the police’s] questions.”

When asked for a comment, Davidson said: “It appears that the Cleveland Heights police appropriately handled what was, unfortunately, a routine suicide. I considered whether to add information to that investigation and declined in both conversations.”

Among other issues, the police records shed new light on how pressure in September from Gaston’s family to have the police reopen the investigation may have been a factor in Franklin’s resignation.

Cleveland Heights police assigned Decaro to the case on Sept. 23.

Flower wrote in an email to Decaro on the 25th that his lawyer received a call on the 24th from a lawyer representing the museum, who sought the name of the investigator assigned by the police.

Flower thought it was a “curious event” to be hearing from the museum so soon after Decaro was assigned to the follow-up.

“I am unable to fathom their [the museum’s] need to interject themselves into this pending investigation and, as of now, I am not inclined to volunteer your contact information to them,” Flower wrote Decaro.

Decaro responded: “Interesting about the attorney since I haven’t spoken to anyone as yet.”

Flower replied: “If CMA’s attorneys are suspicious of Mr. Franklin’s actions and the impact it may have on the museum, they could be putting out feelers.”

On Oct. 21, the day Franklin resigned, R. Steven Kestner, the museum’s chairman, said that Franklin resigned for personal reasons. A statement by Franklin said that he wanted to return to research and writing.

Two days later, when asked about the police report, a copy of which had been obtained by The Plain Dealer, Kestner confirmed that Franklin had had an affair with Gaston during and after her employment at the museum.

In that interview, Kestner stressed that the museum had only learned of the police report about Gaston’s death and the subsequent autopsy in early October, not September.

A series of talking points prepared by Kestner for the Oct. 23 interview, which he shared with The Plain Dealer, included the statement that “In early October, for the first time and based on new information, the Board confirmed that a dating relationship had existed with a former employee during and after her employment at the Museum.”

Kestner said in the subsequent interview that the employee was Gaston, and that the information to which he referred included the police report, the autopsy and other facts he declined to discuss.

Kestner declined to say how or whether Franklin’s affair with an employee led to his resignation, or whether the affair violated museum personnel policies or Franklin’s contract.

On Saturday, Kestner said he wanted to clarify that he did not intend to say in the Oct. 23 interview that the museum had only learned of the police report in October.

Franklin remains in a consulting role at the museum in which he’s expected to help Interim Director Bidwell achieve a smooth transition. An exhibition of Renaissance Italian art, on which Franklin was working, called "Exporting Florence," is scheduled for next year.

The police records provide more information about the scene in Gaston’s apartment on the night of her death than the initial page-and-a-half report dated April 29.

Decaro’s follow-up report states that Franklin told police he tried to loosen the white rope Gaston used to hang herself, which may explain why police found her kneeling and slumped over the foot of her bed. This information was not included in the initial police report.

Photographs show that at the time of her death, Gaston was fully clothed, wearing dark socks, and that she also wore a herringbone jacket, not a heavy green coat as described in the police report.

The report completed did not say whether police asked Franklin if he had Gaston’s cell phone or whether he used a key to enter the apartment.

Flower, in his numerous emails to police, expressed frustration over the investigation and what he viewed as a snap judgment about whether Gaston committed suicide that he thought was based on the Medical Examiner’s supposition about earlier attempts by Gaston to take her life.

Flower said Gaston had indeed attempted suicide earlier in 2010, but that her psychologist later said he considered Gaston to be well-adjusted and happy.

Gaston suffered from shoulder pain following an injury sustained from playing violin. Surgery did not resolve the problem, Flower wrote police.

“This would be akin to a professional football player who lost his leg upon entering the super bowl; depression would be a natural reaction,” Flower wrote.

Flower also sketched a timeline for the Franklin-Gaston relationship extending back to March 2012, when Gaston was an employee in the museum’s development department.

Franklin moved out of his home in Shaker Heights six months later, and took an apartment in the Uptown development in University Circle, near the museum, records show.

Gaston left the museum in Nov. 2012 to become managing director of ChamberFest Cleveland, a concert series initiated by Franklin Cohen, the principal clarinetist of the Cleveland Orchestra, and his daughter, Diana Cohen, concertmaster of the Calgary Philharmonic Orchestra.

Flower told police that Gaston had said she and Franklin hoped to marry by February 2013 at the earliest, and that Franklin’s divorce would be finalized by that time.

The conversation with Franklin recorded by Cassandra Gaston indicates that Christina Gaston felt tension and stress in her new job.

Cassandra Gaston asked if Franklin and her sister felt they were under strain when they were trying to keep their relationship a secret while both were working at the museum.

“We had an amazing…we had an amazing routine,” the transcript quotes Franklin as stating. “You would have been impressed how we, um, learned to ignore each other; we could be standing virtually next to each other and people would have thought we were complete strangers.”

The documents reveal that Franklin had tried to stay in the family’s good graces after Gaston’s death.

He appears to have attended Gaston’s funeral or memorial service, where he met Gaston’s family. He stayed in touch with Cassandra, exchanging numerous texts between May 4 and June 18.

The text messages, also provided to the police by Flower, portray Franklin as trying to explain his love for Christina to her sister.

On May 7, he texted Cassandra that he had planned to be in Cremona, Italy, with Christina on that day, which he said was her 35th birthday.

“It was one of her dreams,” he wrote. “We were setting this whole year of 35 to fulfill all of her dreams one by one.”

Franklin described himself to Cassandra Gaston as “completely shattered and struggling to keep working. I just have to keep going.”

He mentioned “raising money [for the museum] even though it’s the last thing I care about.”

In a text on May 26, Cassandra asked Franklin about the missing cell phone.

Franklin said, “I don’t know what happened to her phone. It was all a terrible blur at that moment. We almost always communicated by Gmail.”

The collection of text messages Flower provided to the police ends on June 18, roughly two weeks before Flower went to the police on July 1 to ask them to list Gaston's cellphone and camera as missing.

The documents show the family later located the camera, but found that it was empty of pictures, which Flower said in an email to police that he considered odd, given that Gaston and Franklin had reportedly traveled to Europe, possibly Spain, together.

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